More housing density is great, but people don't expressly need to live closer to each other. It doesn't hurt, but what they really need is to live closer to work and shopping. Which means mixing residential and commercial zones. If industry uses modern environmental practices (or is forced to by our wonderful strong forward-thinking and principled government... hmm...) then maybe you could mix industrial uses in there too. Basically I'm starting to think the solution might be to abolish all or most zoning. In cities that grew up before zoning was a thing, people self-arranged organically into patterns that "ended up" (in quotes because it's no coincidence) being the most efficient and working for everybody. And those are attractive cities today.

Right! Since we are going to ignore climate change anyway, let's eliminate the need to deal with runoff and those nasty interfering setbacks and build on a half-size 2,500 sq ft lot instead. First floor would be a tandem-type garage with parallel parking for 8 cars (2 aisles, 160 sq ft per space, 4 per side, 80 ft long by 24 ft wide) then 4 units on two or three stories above. If you submerge the parking a bit, you can probably even do it within current height limitations. Mitigate the runoff with a "green roof", add solar collectors, and you are in business!

"Making it legal — not mandatory, just legal — to build homes closer to each other is the way to do this." Why is this controversial? It seems the current legal regime is more radical and poor public policy: prohibiting multi units on single family lot and requiring off-street parking for single family homes.

I really wish more people would read the point you made in C and take it to heart, because it seems to be what so many people miss about housing and density debates. Zoning changes like this aren't done in order to have a practical effect NOW, and really not much can take effect as fast as people would like it to. Allowing fourplexes to be built won't instantly turn swaths of Portland into affordable housing, but what it WILL do is make it so areas that can support a density increase will have the ability to add the housing they need in the future. Complaining that it doesn't get cars off the street tomorrow or lower your rent next month is losing sight of the point.

As a thought experiment, people need to ask this question - what housing IS affordable now, and how do we build more of it? The most cost effective places to live at the moment are probably the ubiquitous ugly 70s era apartments, probably considered quite modern for their day with amenities like wall-to-wall carpet and sliding aluminum-clad windows. How do we build more of those? Go back in time to the 1970s and find some way to incentivise more of them. Affordable housing doesn't get built in real-time, it starts off as market-rate housing that becomes cheaper each year, as tastes change and construction loans are paid off.

Different types of housing have different life cycles of affordability, and things like fourplexes and small apartments are in the sweet spot for going from expensive to cheap relatively fast; they have multiple people working to pay off the construction loans, but they don't carry nearly as much risk as a high-rise. Those 1970s apartments only took 20ish years to become the cheapest rates out there. When a neighborhood starts growing, having that flexibility to build denser housing (even if it doesn't seem necessary yet) is the only way to ensure it will be affordable decades from now, when it IS necessary.

Comment by I'm as Glenn as a bird now (how'bout you?) — December 18, 2018 @ 12:27 pm | Link

Deliveries are a pretty small portion of existing traffic counts, so you use the very same vehicles, duly permitted as delivery vehicles. They have plenty of space to do their job and get there on time, using only existing infrastructure, once you get all or most of the (unpermitted) frivolous single-occupancy private vehicles off the streets.

That's not how it works. If you aren't charging market rate, then yes, you can increase your rent. If you are already charging market rate, you will lose your tenants eventually and struggle to fill the rental property.

the growth will either be concentrated in apartment buildings on the corridors (so, essentially the same traffic impact)

How does this make any sense? Single family would be banned city-wide, so the growth would be spread out all over. And even if growth was concentrated on the main corridors, traffic would spill over to the side streets, as it always does. So this would make biking worse, since our network lacks bike lanes on those main corridors and is almost entirely based on riding on side streets that will now have even more cars on them. This happens every single time, yet so-called "housing advocates" keep pushing this idea that never works.

> they plan to bump up filing enforcement efforts do more research on their list of 350 bicycle retailers to see which ones are selling taxable bicycles, and follow-up on tips from retailers about others shops who aren’t filing

Here's a tip (or snitch, if you will): IBD's (independent bicycle distributors, aka local bike shops) aren't the only places selling taxable bikes. Your Walmarts, Dick's Sporting Goods, and other sellers of less-cool bikes sell plenty that are over the taxable threshold.

David, you may have missed the sentence in this post where I wrote "we should be improving biking everywhere," but I don't think you've missed my years of advocacy on this site and elsewhere for dramatically improved bike infrastructure in East and Southwest Portland.

Also, I'm not sure what you mean about excluding parts of Portland that allow 4plexes but aren't touristy. There are some higher-density zones outside that 3.5 mile ring where newer fourplexes have been allowed and exist; that's great. The proposal I'm advocating here would legalize them in all residential zones of all urban cities.

It's true that my main attention here is to the benefits of adding housing to the more expensive, exclusive neighborhoods, because those are the ones many people are currently physically and/or financially unable to live in even if they want to.

Let's say for argument's sake that we develop an entire square mile of Portland as 4-plexes, each on a typical 5,000 sq ft lot. There are approximately 20 blocks per mile in inner Portland, so one square mile would have 400 blocks (plus lots of 50-ft wide streets), each block being 200ft x 200ft = 40,000 sq ft (just under an acre). With 5,000 sq ft lots, there should be 8 lots per block or 32 4-plex units. so 400 blocks times 32 units per block = 12,800 units per square mile. The Pearl currently has 1.43 residents per unit according to the 2010 census. So our maximum holding capacity with 4-plexes over our square mile = 1.43 people/unit x 12,800 units = 18,304 people per square mile. Now this is every house is converted into a 4-plex. Most houses will not be converted ever. Some will be replaced (or already have been) by apartments with far more than 4 units. So a more realistic number is somewhere between the current mean (650,000 people on 145 square miles = 4,483 people/sq mi) and half the maximum = 9,152 people/sq mi.

Has anyone done an audit of the bike sales from big box stores for compliance? Yes, they do have a lot of $100 bikes but now they retail many more >$200 bikes due to the value of the US Dollar (plus rising overseas wages and Trump Tariffs).